The leading international forum for literary culture, aka The Times Literary Supplement, has a blog that covers more than literary topics.  Click the photo to the right if you enjoy the snippet here:

In his new biography of David Hockney, Christopher Simon Sykes tells a story about the practicalities of making pictures: the young art student, caught up in a flurry of creativity, ran out of paint and couldn’t afford to buy any more.

Hockney’s pragmatic solution was to migrate temporarily to the Royal College of Art’s printing department, which provided its students with materials for free.  Hockney savoured the luxury of raw canvases and plotted how to get the money together to buy more; on a trip to Manchester Art Gallery, he marvelled at how wealthy Van Gogh must have been, to be able to afford so much blue paint. Drawing could be done any time, anywhere, and as a schoolchild, Hockney was constantly sketching, even on his exam scripts: on one translation paper, he wrote simply, “I’m afraid I know no French but will draw some pictures instead”. Painting, on the other hand – and especially oil painting – required resources and planning.